Joëlle Léandre

Interviewed in 1999/2000 by Brian Marley; translated from the French by Mary Lyons

Were your parents, or other members of your family, musical?

I come from a simple, working class background where culture, as far
as music goes, was limited to songs - songs and opera. My father
always listened to opera solos - the great singers or well-known
melodies. The artistic side is essentially my father's, whose
family was nomadic, a little bit gypsy. Well, anyway, on the road!

What was the first piece of music you remember hearing?

I remember a piano piece by Debussy, 'Doctor Gradus and Parnassum'
[she sings], and 'The Happy Farmer', and then lots of terrible,
rapid etudes for the double bass that hurt my little fingers to play
- I was so young . . .

What musics were important to you when you were growing up?

Songs, pop music, Claude François, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones,
but also Edith Piaf. Not jazz . . . that was later, when I got to
Paris. You know how it is when you're a child, you follow the
teacher, the methods, etc., without really knowing where you're going - you study, you rehearse.

As a child you played recorder and piano, but from the age of 14 you
began to concentrate more on the double bass. What was it that drew
you to this cumbersome and intractable instrument?

While I was taking piano, the first year, my brother Richard began
to study the double bass. Why? Pure chance. The piano tuner told
us a new course would be offered at the Conservatory in Aix, a
course for double bass with an extraordinary professor, a true
teacher, very spirited, who really loved his instrument, you can't
imagine how much! And there you have it . . . strictly chance. My
brother began first, I followed several months later. No doubt the
instrument's form, its large upright body, its deep tones, its
presence, attracted me. Later I began working a lot with the bass,
and stopped studying the other instruments. It's intractable,
without a doubt, now that, with all the travelling I do, I've got to
lug it everywhere. I've also turned it into a solo instrument,
commissioning pieces from various French and foreign composers
during the last 20 years. I myself have composed for the double
bass, and written compositions for the theatre, for dancers, for
certain performances in which I always include the double bass
(loyal, as I am!). It's intractable because it's so heavy and
cumbersome, undoubtedly . . . intractable because it demands so much
of a certain kind of will and conviction, defiance even. But it's
an essential and splendid instrument . . . the double bass is still
unknown.

What is your relationship with your instrument?

The relationship of a musician who loves her instrument, life,
people - a daily relationship of reflection and study: Why do
low-pitched instruments lack their own repertory? What is the
position of the double bass in the orchestra? It's role? etc. . . .
After more than 40 years, I still ask myself these questions.

Nothing is ever given, we keep moving forward, changing a little.
It's the same thing with music, the sounds. You have to stay open,
reach out to the other. I've learned so much from other things -
something read, a dancer, looking in a store window, at a tree
isolated in the middle of a field . . . Now I find myself saying
that music is social, it's a social act, whereas composition is a
solitary act. I'm talking about playing music, in the sense of
pleasure, jubilation - you reach out to someone else: "Who are you?" When I work, I always try to de-emphasise the differences, the
hierarchies of performer and composer.

In 1976 you received a scholarship to study in Buffalo, USA, where
you met Morton Feldman and John Cage. You must also have become
aware, or more fully aware, of the music of Earle Brown and
Christian Wolff. What did you learn from these encounters?

So much! It was a giant kick in the butt!

Be yourself! Do it! [spoken in English]

So important!

I'd played Cage's music with the ensemble Itinéraire in '70, '71,
and I'd also read his Silence, For the Birds - what a shock and joy!
He remains one of the most important thinkers, inventors, of the
20th century. I can still see him with his little chronometer
during concerts, or even with his basket of food . . . his poetry
readings. . . . After that, I met Cage often. But fundamentally
it's America and its freeness that are important to me - the music,
of course, but also the galleries, the jazz and clubs, the
performances too, the lofts . . .

I discovered graphic scores. Earle Brown's 'December 1954',
Christian Wolff and many others. Feldman with his minimal
compositions spread throughout the sound, another substance,
different from Scelsi. But also the jazz, downtown [in English]; I
love those musicians who created the history of jazz, absolutely a
state of mind and spirit, a cry, a freeness. It's important in the
history of music. The '60s, '70s, were an extraordinary time for
the arts - painting exploded. [Suddenly,] my music was written and
thought-out differently . . . it was wonderful! I think it's the
essential [component] in my work and reflections. I learned to
'voyage' as much audibly as visually - poetically, too. There were
many definitive encounters with musicians, poets. Once I got back
from the U.S., in fact, I listened differently.

In your CD of John Cage's music, issued by Montaigne, you describe
yourself as "a citizen of the Cagian universe." What do you mean by
that?

I practiced Cage's scores and read his ideas. I tried to
understand, to listen in a new way to all the sounds, without a
hierarchy. Who can say this sound is ugly, that sound is beautiful!
The problem is, as he used to say, the music . . . that's so true.
He gives us the freedom to be oneself, conscious, listening. It's
about long, meticulous work, every day. It's about being
responsible.

When did you realise what you were capable of as a musician, and
what were the circumstances?

What a question! I began to study music when I was nine. One
becomes conscious of things when consciousness awakens. Before that
you follow the rules laid down by your parents, your teacher, you
practice your lesson. That's a very long, slow process. Then you
begin to be shaken up - by a phrase, a fragment, the simple pleasure
of following the score. You develop your memory, you give pleasure
to others - and to yourself, certainly - becoming a musician a
little more each day.

I began playing with ensembles, chamber and symphony orchestras.
With them, you understand there's an exchange, communication,
dialogue. Later, you become a professional, the music is there
every day and you earn your living with it. That said, I always
held out against institutions, against that 'normality' of being, of
required studies that have to followed. Very early on I approached
people - theatre people, dancers, painters. I learned a lot from
those encounters. I think the venture, and the real consciousness,
is to be oneself - to be moved, changed, unsettled, angry, etc.,
etc. . . forceful and fragile, but to know that's what you are and
to live it. My capabilitities are in perpetual motion - different
now that I'm almost 50 than at nine when I began, ever and always
with this vertical object made of wood.

What roles do noise and silence play in your music?

It's in all music, not just mine. My music is work in progress, in
question - structures and forms, composition and improvisation,
colours . . . what do I want to say, what do I want to say this
particular moment, to whom, with which instruments and
instrumentalists, etc. I've always thought that everything - each
object, moment, tool, silence, sound - had a sense, a place, a
usefulness . . . its own life and death, I'd say! Nature is a good
example of this.

Silence is primordial to the way we hear, to thought. Rarely there
is real silence. Even deep in the countryside, in a cave, there are
noises, external sounds. Fundamentally, silence doesn't exist - it
would frighten us too much. Alone, perhaps, in a state of vacuity,
in the transcendence of nothingness, listening to oneself, detached
from everything, is the truest silence.

Sound is not intellectual, not feminine or masculine; it touches
you, unsettles you deeply, it is highly spiritual, it is simple.
It's music that's complicated - its styles, modes, tastes, and those
cultured people who try to determine what one should and shouldn't
listen to. All, or many, compositions are created only with rules,
justifications, or primary intellect. Do you think a bird is going
to justify the form and structure [of its song] before opening its
beak? It's going to express the state of its present being, its
environment, etc.

Returning to a notion of simplicity, of pleasure, is very difficult
in our wealthy, occidental culture so given to meaningless chatter.
But let's not be too critical, dear!

I've learned a lot from listening to a fado, gypsy music, or African
rhythms that can almost put you in a trance. One mustn't
categorise, establish the sounds, name them. Abstractly speaking,
there are as many sounds as molecules in the human body (that's a
nice image, isn't it?). Let them accomplish their work!

Were you aware of improvisation – especially free improvisation –
prior to 1976 when you began your studies in America?

Improvisation isn't taught, especially in the academic and classical
institutions. Only organists, by tradition, are given 'homework' in
style - Renaissance, Bach, etc. Free improvisation would create too
many questions for the teaching staff and for our culture.

I liked 'playing' my instrument immediately, discovering the sounds,
energies, different bowing techniques and . . . you know, the
conservatories are conservative and conserve their traditions. How
can you change the student-teacher relationship, for example?
Arriving in Paris in '69, I discovered jazz, how to listen to
records other than classical, then certain scores: contemporary,
graphic, verbal . . . All that was extraordinary. Improvising is
playing one's own music. By that I mean affirming, taking the risk
to be oneself. How do you expect teachers to talk to us about that?
It's a whole other field of possibilities, of thinking about music,
science, even politics. There's a lot to say on the subject.

By 1974 I'd met dancers, theatre people. I worked with a
percussionist. We searched, explored, we wrote, we improvised. We
performed 'our' music for a play, Troilus and Cressida. Then, yes,
'76, the United States and what awaited me . . . During those years
at the Centre Americain in Paris I'd listened to Bill Dixon, Alan
Silva, Frank Wright, Milford Graves, since '71 or '72. The freedom
of those musicians was very important, shocking almost. When I
remember the kind of student I was in Paris, playing my double bass
"like a good girl" . . . Fundamentally, improvisation is the
musicians' music.

Did improvisation immediately appeal to you, or were its charms
revealed gradually, over a period of time?

The notion of charm in music isn't one of my strong points. The
notion of truth, stripping bare, reflection, exchanges, doubtlessly
jubilation; but responsibility first and foremost, consciousness,
work . . . hard work!

How to most accurately communicate and synthesise your thought -
it's the same process for written and improvised music. I think it
was Stravinsky who said that to compose is to do a lot of
improvising.

Your playing is tightly focused and structurally coherent. It
sounds, in other words, more 'composed' and much less 'chaotic' than
that of many double bass players on the free jazz scene. Do you
think of yourself as a composer who improvises, or as an improviser
who composes?

I'm an improviser who composes. I've also played lots of different
kinds of music, read, analysed lots of scores, thus experienced all
that - structures, forms, various compositions - for so many years.
I've also learned a lot from composers, worked so much, broken down
the individual elements of various styles . . . is it the result of
all that? We are perpetually in the process of becoming. We filch
from this or that. Listening to Coltrane, Mingus or Tosca, Liza
Minelli, normally has to challenge you, doesn't it? One must love,
understand.

It's similar to making a salad - inadvertently one might use too
free a hand adding the oil or another ingredient, and the result,
the taste, is different. The essential thing is that there's this
pleasure in giving, loving, expressing oneself. Self-knowledge is a
long process, isn't it, if one gets involved in the creative
process? I could also talk about culture - European, American.
Looking at Cézanne or a Klee is not the same as looking at Pop Art
or a Pollock. Gypsy music is as far from Puccini's lyricism, etc.,
etc. . . . Yes, when I improvise, from the moment I emit the first
sound, beautiful or not, I compose - there is body and thought.

Of course, the term 'free music' is meaningless. Improvisation,
yes, without a given style - jazz or whatever. But if there's
anyone who is not free, it's the musician. How can you be free with
an instrument in your hands? There are motions, rhythms, colours,
the diversity of the musicians one meets, the instrumentation, the
energy, etc. . . .

Do you visualise every sound a split second before you articulate it?

No, I'm empty. I'm 'receiving', nothing more - forceful and fragile.

You move effortlessly between composition and improvisation, and the
very different worlds these musics inhabit. Other musicians seem to
find this transition difficult to cope with. Are you conscious of
the difference between playing a piece by, for example, John Cage,
and a free improvisation with Derek Bailey?

They're not so very different. When I play Cage, I am at the
service of his thought, I play Cage's music. When I play with
Derek, I play my music in a duet with Derek who has his own music.
It's simple, one can enrich the other, don't you think? There's no
comparison to make.

It's true that jazzmen [in English] were the ones to renovate this
natural language [improvisation], but they don't hold exclusive
rights to it. The language was known in the 17th, 18th centuries
when numerous musicians practiced it, It's an art. We're
surrounded by 70% oral music and its richness, its complexities, its
differences, but only the learned, occidental music conducts our
knowledge and our emotions. How the institutions who think they
hold the power, the knowledge, could change. I rebel against that!
Well, anyway, I resist.

These two languages should encounter each other more often -
interpenetrate each other, and dialogue together.

Cage's antipathy to improvisation is well-known, but some of his
compositions require spontaneous actions from the performers, and
these actions are, in some cases, only conceptually different from
improvisation. He allows the performer a considerable degree of
latitude, but with responsibilities. Is improvisation principally
an ethical concern?

John Cage doesn't deal with improvisation. His music is always
thought out, structured, composed, but open so that musicians can
bring something to it, re-think the form, even - always under Cage's
direction, of course - but "be creative", responsible, always
responsible. It's freedom with a certain direction. At any rate,
we play Cage's music, there's the music stand, paper and a score,
thus it's published, able to be replayed, with numerous rehearsals,
etc., etc.

But Cage was never opposed to improvisation. He was rarely opposed
to anything, as a matter of fact. He said to me that the musician
who improvises without a style, or a set of semantics, more or less
repeats the same things because he is codified by his instrument. A
violinist, for example, has a set of codes: fingering, phrasing.
Even the fact of our daily practice during our apprenticeship, and
the simple pleasure of rephrasing, of a certain set of gestures
also, pleasing positions. . . . I'll say, for my part, that when
one improvises, his score is himself, the other, moving like the
clouds. I'm not in total agreement with Cage. It's long,
difficult, a lot of training the ear, but, yes, it can be a question
of semantics, giving form and sense in the instant itself. Whether
that's improvisation - or life, for that matter - is the least of
it. Take a look; we never stop improvising! Look at your gestures,
your days. Even when everything seems chaotic, you notice that, at
the end of the day, there's organisation, decisions, forms. Why try
to analyse all that. Let it be what it is.

Why are there so few women working in improvised music?

That's false, it's a misconception. What's true, it's a question of
statistics, is that there are fewer women in any given profession.
It's unquestionably the men who decide to let us integrate or not.
That's changed a little over the last 30 years. It's a subject
that, in itself, is worth a book, isn't it?

I'd rather pose the question differently, and ask the men what they
think about the situation. I think men are quick to be sure about themselves; society is
constructed in that way. But there will be more and more creative
women who improvise, compose, take their lives in hand. I don't see
why men should always be the ones who "blaze the trail". As for me, I don't believe in complaining, I believe in work!

When you sing and play double bass simultaneously, are you duetting
with yourself?

Yes! and for the public . . . happily! It seems to me that one
sings internally while one plays, that's natural. I recall my
professor, who always told me, "Sing, go ahead and sing, hear the
phrase before you play it."

Giacinto Scelsi's explorations of the inner life of the note seem to
have profoundly influenced your playing – or perhaps they just tied
in with your own particular interests and inclinations. What is it
about Scelsi's way of making music that appeals to you?

It would take far too much time to talk about Scelsi. As early as
1978 I went to Rome to meet him, to talk, to play his music. His
music is most moving, a unique music, I think, with its simplicity
of sound, how you hear the sound. In itself, a sound is only a
sound; it has its intrinsic beauty, its life, its voyage. Scelsi's
music is profound, simple, and complex at the same time, at least as
to playing it, understanding it, listening to it . . . Certain
pieces are more violent, tense - it's a music that disturbs.

It isn't intellectual, but truly universal. One can listen to it,
receive it easily, for it's highly spiritual. It speaks to us of
man, of nature itself, and of our passage. That's how I hear it.
It's a ventral music, a 'feminine' music. When I say feminine, I
mean it contains life and death. There's not a woman who's
conceived without knowing she's given death when she gives life.

It's that profoundness, and responsibility. It's well known also
that Scelsi surrounded himself with female performers. He held the
expression, the responsibility, and no doubt the interior nature of
women in high esteem, which must have suited his works.

You should also know that he was a great improviser on piano. At
his home he had a tape recorder on the piano, and he played,
improvised . . .

Few men see, recognise, understand these two elements we all possess
- feminine/masculine, force and fragility. That's how I see and
imagine it was with Scelsi, but it's only my version.

When I play Scelsi's pieces, I become 'sound' inside, and I'm
detached; I feel implicated in the same way as when I play my own
music. Each portion of sound, silence, respiration, motifs - melody
or not - is life, a total engagement. What blows me away in Scelsi's music is the profoundness, the truth
and simplicity of the results.

Classical musicians tend to play with exaggerated control, which
hampers their expressive potential. For example, few
classically-trained musicians other than yourself could have so
full-bloodedly taken on the vocal component of Scelsi's 'Maknongan'. Is
there anything you'd like to say about interpretation and, in
particular, expressivity?

Being open, hearing and listening, are the potting soil of
expressivity. What are we? We're like sponges, saturated with joy
and sorrow all our lives.

A receptive musician has the task - with time and patience, and
work, of course (not only with his instrument or his music, but to
go outside, look around, read, etc.) - to shake us up, to challenge
us. That's what expressivity is - it's life! It's about life, the
dramaturgy of life. To see the beauty, but also the fragility, the
seriousness, that thread, each day. You know, I believe in work,
I'll say it again and again. All those moments, those mishaps . . .
and the patience to decode it all. Today's society no longer has
any patience, that sharp, pointed consciousness to say, "Now then,
what did I do yesterday?" etc., etc. Living is a job!

Apparently, the Balinese have a saying: "We have no art. We just
try to do everything as well as possible." If music had no greater
cultural significance than, say, cooking or repairing a bicycle,
would we enjoy it more?

I agree. Nothing is banal or exceptional. There's action and love.
To effectively do one's best, whether that's love, bicycling or
brushing one's cat, it must be done with love. As soon as there's
conviction, perception, there's creation, thus movement and life,
thus responsibility. Quite simply, it's necessary to "do one's job"
with love, if I can put it that way.

Improvisation is a much-misunderstood way of making music. What
would you say to someone who told you that improvisation had no
merit?

I'd say, "Okay", if that's the way he sees it. If he likes bananas
I'm not going to force him to like apples. I've already said a lot about improvisation. Improvising is a work
in progress [in English], I use it, it's a language, a vision of the
world too, an art in itself, part of every day.

What function does your music serve, and what value does it have?

I'm not in a good position to answer that question. It has value
for me, my voyage. Is a person useful? Artists, and creation in
general, are subversive and thus troubling. Artists who depend on
government funds, well, that's another matter! A doctor is useful
(I don't, however, like that word). But art . . . music . . . ? What I hope for is that when I give a concert, when people listen
to my records, they come away touched and, quite simply, filled with
life.

Would you like to say something about yourself, your instrument or
your music that hasn't been touched on?

No, thank you . . . oh, yes! Think things over, okay, but with a
lot of distance, too, to find the balance. Laugh, as well -
laughter is so good!